Love Your Sister

Victorian Australian of the Year 2018 and Love Your Sister co-founder Samuel Johnson, has one simple message for anyone interested in solving the cancer conundrum...

“Love Your Sister passes on 100% of all individual donations IN FULL to the country’s best researchers. No skimming, no admin, no bull.” - Samuel Johnson

It all started with the most absurd dare imaginable. Connie Johnson, young mum of two, was told that she was terminal with breast cancer and to arrange her affairs. Instead, she sent her brother, actor Samuel Johnson (best known as the guy who played ‘Molly’), to ride around the entire country on a unicycle, to personally remind every young mum in the land to check their boobs. Love Your Sister was born.

Samuel kept his promise. After 364 days atop his one-wheeler, over 1000 media calls, 450 community fundraisers and 50 school visits, Samuel finally returned to Federation Square on his unicycle and into Connie’s waiting arms. And the scientists at the Garvan Research Foundation found themselves $1.4M richer.

While Samuel’s insane unicycling adventure is done, Love Your Sister is not. Not while there’s still no cure. Not after Samuel promised the 360,000-strong Love Your Sister Village that he would up the fundraising goal to TEN million dollars. Currently, their total stands just over $7M. There is now a new Breast Cancer Lab at Garvan, headed by the Connie Johnson Fellow, Professor Elgene Lim, and a new national metastatic tissue bank, for all cancers, is rolling out this year.

After his Gold Logie-winning turn as Molly Meldrum for Network Seven, Samuel promptly retired from acting to focus entirely on Love Your Sister’s goal of raising ten million dollars for cancer research. In Samuel’s words, ‘Cancer is the last true riddle of our time (not of our doing) and I wanna be a part of the push to solve it once and for all. I won’t play pretend on telly while science is being muzzled’.